Month: April 2012

Share this:

Like this:

I read this. I avoid murder porn, and analysis of cases like Fred and Rosemary West, and so I ignored this article for about a day. THen I read it. It gripped me, like almost almost nothing else I have read in a while. It addresses the question of how we reconcile inner peace, without denying the reality of human atrocity and is the process Marion Partington, the sister of one of Fred and Rosemary West’s victims, Lucy entered into, to deal with the atrocity of what happened. It is worth reading. Really.

Hedge Fund managers have been betting against the Eurozone, and unlike the revelations that Goldman Sachs had been betting on failure resulting from situations they largely created, this is contributing to the impression that the limits of this madness are being reached everywhere. ‘Hedge Fund Managers make for unlikely supporters of Hollande’, says the FT, with a financier warning ‘If something comes along then it changes the sentiment in the market, if not the fundamentals’. The article reads like a form guide for betting against an austerity battered and blinded eurozone, which appears to be the only smart money now. Sarkozy now also finding the neo liberal adventure that was Libya becomes another albatross round his neck while Mr.Hollande with opposition to the ratification of the ‘fiscal discipline’ treaty at the core of his platform, and no sign that this is just campaign rhetoric yet.

The inevitable Europe wide redefinition of the political spectrum is benefitting the far right, in the way we are always threatened with, but Marine Le Pen is not the only option for an electorate who are choosing ‘between the plague and cholera’. The rhetoric about growth, reverting to the simple sound bites that comfort politicians, who appear perplexed about why an unresolved financial crisis on this scale has resulted in a democratic crisis with their heads on the block. Mario Monti casts a long shadow into the unknown western politicians have created outside their corrupt little bubbles. The Dutch coalition falling, has not prevented deficit reductions following the required track, but Romania’s government have been described as the latest victims of the ‘austerity backlash’ which may be more of the shoots of dissenting health visible in the cracks of democratic institutions across Europe. The expected wave of summer of activist investors causing havoc show that the democratic limits of neo liberalism are not just being felt inside political institutions.

Alistair Darling uses his comment piece in the FT, to rewarm a political illusion of growth based austerity measures. Saying the word Keynes, in the hope citing an economist whose model paved the way for the worst excesses of neo liberalism, will undo the reality that a Keynesian economic system was inadequate if we were to function in a global economy dominated by a different economic system. Especially when dominated by the whims of powers greater than ourselves. This is truer now than it was in mid-seventies when that superpower was a special buddy and in the ascendancy.

Constant repetition of Keynes’ name never really sold ‘austerity slower’, as an actual Keynesian platform. And even if it had, Keynes failed to recognise the scale of the threat unrestrained capital poses to democracy, or the risk he created. Darling is still under the impression starving yourself to fit into the response to a banking crisis, allows you to also gain weight AND treat the illness that required the stripping of everything to the bone… if you add the occasional stimulatory cheese sandwich.

‘We must tell the truth, there are no magic formulas. Reform takes time and so does the impact on growth and jobs, some people these days are creating the impression that a pro-growth policy is easy’ the former Belgian Prime Minister points out. I suppose when the economic wisdom is starvation creates growth like ignorance is strength, that is the case. This as US continues to see its growth prospects, undermined by the consequences of spending cuts. Competition from Europe is an issue that has been licked for a while. You apparently ‘shrink and grow’ an economy, by choosing differently labelled plates and bottles in Wonderland.

It is the ability to bring the banks to heel, which brings out the most breathless speculation from Mr.Darling. Concerns which never left, are still building over the difficulty of assessing how stable and solid our banking sector isn’t.‘Investors don’t know how to manage these bruised entities’ says Paul Murphy at the FT. The RBS ‘shareholder swap’ has added density to a worryingly opaque situation, an expensive action without discernible benefit. Banks are due to start reporting figures next week, there are concerns about whether the contraction of our economy will have caused a spike in loan defaults

Luckily the plan was always to exploit inequality, deleveraging onto those least likely to hold those assets or those loans. Demonising young people, the sick, and the women whose labour doesn’t bring bonuses, deliberately aggravating emerging housing, personal debt, and social care crisis so our deleveraging plans could create capacity elsewhere…..and increasing authoritarianism as a response to measures which deliberately open up the ‘informal’ economy.

That spike may occur, but the size will be considerably smaller thanks to our spiteful targeting of those who couldn’t absorb the cost of the crisis safely. Our centre-left wondering if a quick shift of the narrative could turn the page on ‘Tory cuts’, leaving those whose lives have already been destroyed as collateral damage, while they pick up the mantel of saviours and continue down the same road.

Share this:

Like this:

I use my blog as a place to explore ideas. Sometimes a long post is just me ejecting what it is in my head, and then once it is up here it is up here. And I can go back to it. It’s the equivalent of me stretching my legs. If you trip over a long post, and (understandably) think ‘eugh’, come back in a few weeks. I’ll have realised what I am trying to say by then, and said it better. ;-D The Orwell Prize thing made me slightly more worried about readers, than I might usually be…

Share this:

Like this:

Double dip recession? Gross underestimation of the number and scale of dips. Stagnation betwixt could never have been described as a recovery convincingly, and we have shovelled everything into keeping inflated the bit of the economy that is broken. The government deliberately shrank the economy and now we are gobsmacked by the news .. that the economy shrank?

A political debate stretched thin by the limits of Labour and Tory neo-liberalism run on the timetable of the right wing press didn’t throw up a solution or any opposition or alternative? Really? How very odd.

Double Dip recession, please! Let’s called it a depression triggered by a financial crisis, that has exposed the limits of our political system, and led to a complete re-examining of the social and economic contract. The consequences of the deficit crisis that has been manufactured as a response, may have left us with significantly reduced options to deal with the real crisis we are now exposed to. And we have provided a vision of politically driven austerity to warn the rest of the world. The causes of our financial crisis the main beneficiaries of the deficit crisis created as a response. US and Greece are our cautionary tales, we are everywhere elses…

Murdoch’s appearance at Leveson is a lot funnier when you think of the truths we have all accepted as universal, that no-one is now allowed to acknowledge. Strange times. He didn’t use The Sun to get influence, and yet it waged war on the British people at the shoulder of the government for years. Didn’t he look old?

Share this:

Like this:

Yes, and western governments like it that way. Cos they do too. An international, institutional indifference borne of the same feeling. Western politics needs Arab women to be nothing more than headscarfs and hymen in discussions which avoids examination of the inequality the economic system we impose, exploits. We exploit the same inequality domestically for the same reason, using much the same techniques on a less brutal scale. For some.

Added later- this post was written rashly. I have never been to a country in the world where men hate women. Shame I have seen few political systems that didn’t. Rest of post stands.